Sounds noble Kit, however (warning), knowing all of that I still would unleash holy hell on someone if they closelined me or punched me (on purpose) for no reason.
How absurd is it that someone would just do that? I mean, that's the kind of thing you might think about as a joke sometime. "How funny would it be to see Lawrence Taylor take out that old lady with the groceries?" If I were on the receiving end of that (unless it were Lawrence Taylor) then there's no doubt that I'd be pissed and then go about as wild as I could. It's hard to believe that that could actually happen to someone...
I think, in life, there are times when it is perfectly acceptable to lose all control and retaliate with as much force as humanly possible. In my book, this would be one of those situations. I would confront the person and if they tried to fight me or were in any way mean to me, I would level them. If they could explain to me what had just happened and why, there's a chance I would just move on after a verbally assaulting barrage of "f you, what were you thinking?" etc...
Damn that would piss me off! Luca, that's a lot of restraint that you showed! I'm impressed. Like I said, if someone did that to me, well, I might be the one in jail. You're probably better off having handled it the way you did, but I guess that came down to your personality and use of logic in a situation where I would throw logic 'out the window' and proceed to be as bad as the guy who did the initial random and completely insane act. lol
So my fellow AppleNovians, the moral of the story is: don't punch Messiahtosh if you ever see him in real life. The other moral is: when you're homeless and it's cold outside, get arrested for punching someone.